


Paint it Red

by Damalia (Achrya)



Series: Modern ABO, PolyPack [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 06:03:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6741655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Achrya/pseuds/Damalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ren doesn't really consider himself a pack leader. He just wants to care for his mates as best be can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paint it Red

**Author's Note:**

> Still just exploring the characters a bit. Ren, somehow, is the hardest one for me. Maybe because he's such a nice genuine guy and I...I am a jerk.

Ren didn’t really consider himself a pack leader. He understood that officially, legally and on paper, he stood as the head of his part of the Minami pack and that all of the others had agreed to follow him, to be his submissive mates and stay in his service until he released them. 

Such was the nature of packs. One alpha who stood above everyone else, betas and omegas and eventually children who were below them. 

In reality, however, he never considered himself ‘in control’ of much of anything. How could he be with a pack as big as theirs (there were lots of larger packs but they were also vastly different. It was, perhaps, easier to keep many mates when they were separate and compartmentalized, when it wasn’t really one big unit.) with some many vastly different personalities and needs. 

He’d tried, at first, to always be on top of everything. To grab the reins and be the sort of alpha his sire was but it wasn’t the sort of thing that suited him. Ren had always been told he was soft, more like a beta or an omega with his need to please and satisfy others. His mates, his sire still sometimes told him, were supposed to be please him. That was their role in the pack, to cater to their alpha in all areas. 

But instead he tried to cater to them. He wanted to take care of them, give them everything they needed, keep his mates from ever wanting for anything, especially his attention. He remembered going days, sometimes weeks, without seeing his sire and how sad it would make his carrier. She’d had no one to talk to, isolated from her fellow packmates and the world at large, save her children, no one who cared and it had worn her down. 

He didn’t want that for his mates. He wanted there to be more than ownership, sex, and maybe children he never had time for. Weren’t mates supposed to be people you loved, people an alpha wanted the world to know they’d chosen and who had chosen them back, people who you wanted by your side forever? Wasn’t a pack a family? 

He was, perhaps, a hopeless romantic.

Or, according to Alexander, just hopeless.

For a while he’d tried to be everything they all needed all the time. Tried to fit going to class, working at the cafe when they were busy, dealing with his own family, everyone else’s families (to a point that he’d been grateful Jason and Ari were estranged from their families) showing up at anything someone’s alpha was supposed to be at, trying to spend time with each of them every day individually and together as a pack...there had been a lot of things he’d tried to juggle. 

He’d burned out, crashed hard, and it had stung.

He understood now there just weren’t enough hours in the day for everything, especially now that he was interning at his uncle’s law firm. So he did his best and hoped it was enough. Hoped everyone knew he wasn’t shuffling them to the side or forgetting them or any of the things he’d felt like his sire had done with his carrier. 

Some days he came home and felt good about things and other days he didn’t. It wasn’t the same, he knew, because his mates had each other. Not kept apart or made to feel like they were in competition, never really alone. 

He was happy with how it had worked out. Before he’d always figured he’d take one mate, the clear solution to avoid the pack situation he’d hated so much growing up, and he’d had his eyes on Xander. He knew he would have been happy that way too but he also knew that this, what they had, felt right. 

Even if it was a lot of work. Even if sometimes he missed shifts in mood and forgot things and didn’t realize someone was upset for far longer than it should have taken. Even if he felt worn out sometimes and no amount of cuddle piles or petting could help. 

It was worth it. For him at least.

Sometimes he wasn’t so sure about the others.

“Vaan?” He leaned against the door frame to his youngest mate’s bedroom, frowning at the thick scent of sadness in the air. Was this new? Something that had been building up that he’d been too busy to notice until it was so overwhelming it burned his nose.

He’d been walking past, on his way to play guinea pig for Toshiro’s cooking and model for Kiaan’s latest design school project (Why Kiaan wanted him and not the inarguably better built Shiro or Jason he’d never understand. Less fabric needed that way maybe?) when he’d gotten a nose full of misery leaking out from Vivaan’s room. And there was Vaan, curled up on his bed, staring vacantly at a padded hanger with a long rectangle of deep red fabric draped over it. 

He recognized it, of course. When his sire had brought Vivaan to him he’d had it with him, wedding garments sent by his family. He’d thought it a little presumptuous at the time that they’d just assumed he’d want to marry their prissy, cranky, and entirely too young son just like that. But here they were, not married exactly but together. 

“Vaan?” He tried again, stepping into the room. There wasn’t much to it, just a bed and dresser, but Vivaan was rarely in here, preferring to room hop more than anyone except, perhaps, Ren. It was more of a fancy closet than anything else. 

The small omega hiccuped and sniffled but didn’t say anything to him. Ren climbed onto the bed and laid down next to the other, reaching out to run his fingers through thick black hair. Vaan liked to be touched, responded to even the barest of brushes like he’d been denied real human contact most of his life (which wasn’t untrue; Vaan had been sent off to an Omega boarding school when he was six and Ren got the feeling it wasn't a very warm place), and Ren liked to touch. 

Vaan hiccuped again then, voice thick, spoke. “Mother wants me to send it back home so my sister, Pari, can make use of it. She and my sire have decided they are done trying to convince me to come home and lead a decent life.” 

Decent, from what Ren could see, meant a life as a meek wife to an alpha who would keep Vaan, their oldest precious omega child, pregnant and docile. Or, at least, wouldn’t encourage college or work or other flights of fancy unbecoming an omega of the well regarded Srini line. He didn't think that kind of thing would suit Vaan, not *his* Vaan at least. Vaan was stubborn and bullheaded and spoiled and mean and emotional and brilliant and amazing and painfully honest and...he couldn't imagine a life where all of that was stifled under fake smiles and carefully thought out words. 

There had been, over the years, a few attempts to get Vaan to leave and be courted by other suitors. It was only that they’d been so assured he would decided to keep Vivaan and had signed paperwork naming him as guardian that had kept Vaan with them. Now, that Vaan was legally of age to make his own choices, the pressure to return home had increased. His sire had sent many emails with pictures of alphas who would happily take an omega who was 'used' (and Vaan's cheeks had burned with anger at the word used) so long as they'd never been bred. There was options for Vaan so he didn't need to remain in such an indecent place. 

Indecent meaning an alpha who let him make his own choices, being able to be with Toshiro openly and not sneaking around in the dead of night, and being in love with his omega pack mates instead of hating them bitterly. And maybe Ren was romanticizing their situation a little, or a lot, but that didn't make it untrue. 

He hadn’t imagined the Srinis ever actually giving up now that it was Vaan they needed to sway instead of him. Vaan’s mother was a bear of a woman in spite of being even shorter and smaller than her tiny son, and she was stubborn and fierce enough in regards to her pups that even Ren had been cowed by her. 

“Mother and I picked that out together.” Vaan mumbled wetly. “We looked for weeks until she said this one was just right. She told me I looked like an adult, and would be an adult, and that’s what it meant. Not being a child anymore.”

He looked towards the hanger again. There were, he knew, a blouse and an underskirt to go with the saree, both in the same red. The saree itself was silk, dark red with a heavy golden band along the edge and then delicate golden embroidery filling the rest of the space. It was, he was sure, very nice. 

He could offer to buy Vaan a new one but he was also sure that wasn’t the point. It had to be more the rejection, again, and the fact his parents were ‘giving up’ on him and that his mother was taking back something they’d put time into together. Vaan was...very young, just barely out of high school now, and between boarding school and then coming to live with him there probably hadn’t ever been much time spent with his mother.

That, finding something for a wedding (even one Vaan wasn’t getting a say in and, Ren had found out eventually, had been terrified at the prospect of) must have been one of the only times he’d had his mother’s undivided attention. 

It set his teeth on edge and filled him with a animal sort of anger that someone would take that back, deny his mate that memory. But he swallowed it down, wrapped it up to vent to Jason about later. 

“Maybe they’ll change their minds.” Stranger things had happened. 

Van’s head moved back and forth under his hand. “No. Mother is...tired.”

‘Of me’ hung in the air, unsaid. 

Ren nosed the back of his mate’s neck, heart squeezing at the soft hitching sob the other let out. He didn’t know what to say, Ari would have been better because the redhead knew all about disappointing his family and being turned away, so he drew the small body against his own and curled around Vaan.

Jason or Toshiro would have been better for this, large as they both were.

He would do his best anyway. 

**Author's Note:**

> http://polypackispoly.tumblr.com/ My blog for all of this. Very basic so far, but I plan to put up little ficlet things, deep character thoughts (not that deep) and some image posts.


End file.
